CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management, which means Customer Relationship Management. In the older physical stores, this activity was carried out with the help of a notebook, in which the owner of the establishment wrote down the accounts and preferences of each customer. In modern virtual stores, however, this management is carried out by systems integrated into the e-commerce platform.
The notebook used by older merchants allowed them to know which products were most purchased, the frequency of purchase, payment dates (cash entry into the cashier), etc. With this notebook, it was possible to discover the behavior of each customer and, thus, offer them more personalized and more appropriate products and value propositions, in addition to sealing the relationship and building loyalty.
A CRM system integrated into an e-commerce platform basically does the same thing as a notebook, only with much more functionality and much greater coverage power. With it, the owner of a virtual store can:
– Integrate all customer relationship data from your physical and online stores into a single system, allowing for faster and higher-quality service. I've already mentioned a case like this in the article " Moça Trigueira integrates physical store with online store ". It's worth checking out!
– Discover the reasons why a customer abandoned a shopping cart moments before finalizing the purchase in the virtual store and encourage them to finish the process, which helps to increase sales;
– Track the history of accesses and purchases of a customer to know their preferences in order to offer them similar or complementary products via E-mail Marketing campaigns or through “buy together” promotions in the virtual store itself;
– Uncover the reason why a customer completed the purchase, but did not pay the slip and encourage him to print the duplicate and make the payment within the stipulated period to receive the desired goods.
Just to summarize, CRM is important in e-commerce because it enables scientific management (through statistical data) of customer relationships, which improves service, increases loyalty and, ultimately, increases profits.
